March 15th The Dwindlers will release their new album ‘Allegories’ through Heart and Soul publisher. The Dwindlers are poet, Michelle Seaman, and bassist and composer, Benjamin Dauer.
“‘Allegories’ is a collection of music and poetry composed over the past year in an effort to change stories of pain and fear into stories of grace. Inspired by the elegant movements of animals, birds, and insects, this collection hopes to charm, and sometimes challenge, the listener.” [taken from the press release text]
The idea to recite poetry accompanied by a music arrangement certainly is not new at all as many artists already failed to get this managed properly. Just to be clear ex ante: The Dwindlers mostly master the task that is given by this combination of words and music. The main problem of this kind of arrangement is – from my point of view – the ideal balance of words and music, both parts have to interact, none of them should be in the foreground at all. At the same time the poetry has to be intense enough to be worth it to be set to music. And the music has to accompany the meaning of the poem. The Dwindlers chose the most common type of implementation as they renounce of any melody in the musical part of the arrangement. The melody is the result of the rhythm of the spoken word so that it’s not created through tonal sequences but through the speech melody. Regarding ‘Monkey’ Seaman doesn’t find a melody which leads to a certain monotony that is created through the unvaried speech rhythm. So from my point of view ‘Monkey’ stands out in a more negative sense. Anyway ‘Widow, Daddy and the Wolf’ and ‘Peacock and the Kitty’ stand out positively as they find an even perfect balance between rhythmic continuity, harmonic variety and freely recited poetry. I shouldn’t forget to mention that the poems are interesting as well. Nevertheless the most outstanding piece is the even droning ‘Pickering’s Hyla’ that seems to be built with processed piano. Also it is kind of an interlude in between all the accompanied poems. So logically it doesn’t draw one’s attention completely which otherwise would be straining regarding the overall album duration. So ‘Allegories’ is a well-balanced release that comes as a CD-R release + paperback book. The first Edition will be 50 copies only. With its even jazzy instrumentation – the standard trio instrumentation using mainly double bass, piano and a drumset – I would not put it into a certain genre. But as I personally don’t like all these genres with dozens of subgenres and sub-subgenres I don’t care about this. And just to those that insist on the genre fetish: it’s poetry and music. Not more but also not less than that…
